


i'm glad you're evil too

by enmity



Category: Tales of Legendia, Tales of Series
Genre: :pensive emoji: :fist emoji:, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 04:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16591043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: She’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it and burn it for good measure.





	i'm glad you're evil too

**Author's Note:**

> ive been in this fandom for like 5 minutes and im already a parody of myself

**I.**

She lies the first time she meets him, on impulse, because from where she’s standing, being thirteen sounds a hell of a lot better than being twelve, and it’s not like she even looks her age, so, well, that kind of makes it even, doesn’t it?

Sven’s eyes are bright through his glasses, and he ruffles her hair, laughing like the adult he is, tall and entirely too worldly and nothing she can fool and—crap, didn’t Mom tell her once not to talk to strange men? That’s the first commandment right there, the golden rule, and she’s just thrown it out the window, like _poof_. You’d think trying to run away thrice would’ve taught her some things by now, but no, she’s barely a block past her house and she’s already screwing up.

“I gotta go,” Norma says, as the urge to shake him off needles at her, and her bag feels oddly heavy. She does neither. Her legs freeze in place. “I mean—uh— _please don’t kill me or lock me in a dark attic or tell my parents I’m trying to run away from home_ —did I say that out loud.”

Her hand flies to cover her mouth too late, and she figures she’s failed again. She braces herself to be questioned, dragged, dreading the inevitable lecture that awaits her like all the other times she's tried before.

Sven doesn’t do any of that, though. Against all odds, the man in front of her steps back, grinning wildly, and it’s then that a part of her whispers that it’s not like she’s ever been good at listening to her parents, anyway.

**II.**

The truth is that she’s just not very good at a lot of things. At ten, her parents had her take an entire class just to teach her how to sit still, and by then their relationship had soured enough that the moment she did well enough to be let go, she proceeded to go back to her usual jittery self within a day, just to spite their sorry asses. Not one of her prouder moments, but hey, at least it made them mad.

When she tells Sven this, off-hand, he rocks back against the bench, and clutches his stomach laughing, _ha! I can’t believe you did that! That’s our Norma for you!_

She doesn’t think the story is that funny, and he’s freaking her out a little, the candid way he just doubles over laughing – grown-ups aren’t supposed to look so happy, at least not any she’s ever known (well, besides him, but he’s a weirdo anyway) – but she figures an adult who doesn’t chastise her choice of words is one she should take a chance on.

Maybe if he stopped looking at her legs like that she’ll learn to think he’s not so bad after all.

**III.**

It’s one of those late afternoons that they’re feeding the birds in the park, and when they’ve run out of seeds and Norma’s resorted to staring moodily out into the sky as Sven smiles at nothing in particular (the _creep_ ) she wonders, not for the first time, when he stopped being a stranger to her, and became just another fixture in the gray landscape of her life. 

Except, not really. Except that if he's anything, he's the solitary splotch of color. It’s irritating, giving him such a special place in her mind, but it’s hard not to, when Sven’s the only person who can make her so _angry_ at the drop of a hat, and when she’s busy being mad at him it’s easy enough to forget that it’s getting late, and that the sooner her eres connects with his sorry ass and he falls over, the sooner she’ll have to leave him there, and then the sky will have gone dark, and she’ll have run of out excuses not to turn around and return to the house that has never felt like a home. To play the good daughter she’s never known how to be, and even if she did, she’s not dumb enough to think that’ll be enough to keep her parents together. And she hates that part most of all.

It’s been a while since she last tried to run away. She’s even forgotten to count the days.

She must’ve said it out loud, because then Sven’s smile falters, and he’s looking at her suddenly, eyes hidden in the half-moon obfuscation of his glasses, his face backlit by the setting sun.

For a second, she dreads the inevitable. She wonders if this is the goodbye. If maybe he’s figured out she’s just a kid and really, she’s not fooling herself, he must’ve figured long ago he was wasting his time. Maybe he felt bad for her – the problem kid, the space case – felt the same kind of pity that had tugged at her the first time they met, pulled her towards him even as the alarm bells rang clear in her head.

For a second, Norma braces herself.

Instead, Sven leans over, and flicks her forehead.

Once she’s given up on throttling him, he raises his hand in apology, and when he says, “Do you still want to run away?” he doesn’t sound like he’s kidding at all.

**IV.**

“Are you still hanging out with that geezer?”

Norma’s pencil strikes an absent line down her notebook, crossing out the length of an equation. Find the value of _n_. She frowns, and flips a page. Just them in the dorm room and a pile of homework, and girls aren't supposed to keep secrets from their best friends.

“What?”

Past her algebra textbook and across the table, Agatha squints. “That guy! The one you keep complaining about? Don’t try to change the subject,” she says when she catches Norma’s reddening face, the telltale splash of pink against her cheeks.

“I guess I am.” Norma shrugs, elbows crossing. “I mean, that idiot? He’d die if I don’t check up on him. It’s my responsibility as his student to make sure he still remembers how to feed himself, after all.” She doesn’t try to hide the sarcasm bleeding from her words.

Agatha looks at her skeptically, like she’s torn between asking, _is he even a real teacher,_ or, _what are you_ really _learning from him, huh?_ and nudging her just to drive the point home.

“I just owe a lot to him,” Norma says, evenly, and it isn’t a lie at all. Her pencil rolls over the edge of the table, onto the floor.

“I’m not so sure that’s all it is,” Agatha says, returning to her work, and though her tone is tongue-in-cheek, Norma still has to spend an additional two hours bent over the Relares alphabet just to go to bed without having to face the naked horror of Thinking About It.

She’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it and burn it for good measure.

**V.**

She wakes up one day with a painful knot in her chest, and as she’s spreading jam onto her toast it hits her, that she can’t catch up to him fast enough. She is only fifteen, and so young, and there is so much of the world she hasn’t seen, so much Relares she cannot decipher yet. And there is a part of her that keeps looking out the window – the part of her she hates, that always braces for impact, the worst case scenario – waiting for the day she’ll wake up to an empty study and a door left open. There is a part of her that remembers how to be alone, and it’s the one that keeps expecting him to leave.   

Her feet scrape the kitchen floor as she pushes back the chair and stands, turning to face him. “Hey. Master? Hey!”

“Yeah?” If she didn’t know better she’d have attributed that dopey expression to chronic sleep deprivation.

“You’re burning your scrambled eggs,” Norma says, and makes a face, yawning, “I’ve got class. You better get it cleaned up by the time I’m back, I’m not washing the dishes for you,” but what she thinks is, _sometimes I knock on the door without expecting anyone to answer._

But that isn’t going to happen. 

_Yeah,_ she tells herself; smiles a little, even. Fools don’t die so easily, after all.

She stands in the doorway for a moment too long, and ends up late for class that day after all.


End file.
